SOURCE: "Pearl Buck's Full, Rich Life," in New York Herald Tribune, November 7, 1954, sec. 6, p. 1.

In the following review, Bullock discusses the juxtaposition of Buck's life in China and her life in America.

In My Several Worlds Pearl Buck, with attractive humility and grace of spirit, gives us a step-by-step account of her pilgrim's progress, in China and the United States, from little girlhood into mature and effective womanhood. Mrs. Buck's writings have had a wide and enthusiastic acceptance and her literary honors include the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. But it becomes evident in My Several Worlds that all the novels, biographies and other more obviously purposeful volumes that she has turned out over the years have been but the season-to-season fruit of her development as a woman and a human being. "Life," she says, "must...